Promise Technology EX4650 Computer Hardware User Manual


 
SuperTrak EX Series User Manual
182
Ranges of Disk Array Expansion
The Windows 2000 and Windows XP (32-bit) operating systems support a 10-
byte LBA format. As a result, these OSes can only recognize 4 billion addresses.
If you create a logical drive using the default 512 B sector size, the logical drive
will be limited to 2 TB of data, even if there is more space available on your
physical drives.
This limitation does not apply to Windows XP (64-bit), 2003 Server, Vista, and
Linux OSes with the 2.6 kernel. Linux OSes with the 2.4 kernel do not support
variable sector sizes, therefore you cannot apply the solution described here to
those OSes.
Note that once you create your logical drive, you cannot change the size of the
sectors. Nor can you increase the number of address blocks that the OS
recognizes.
You can direct WebPAM PRO to expand a logical drive beyond the maximum
expansion size. When the expansion is finished:
WebPAM PRO will show the logical drive in the desired size.
Your operating system might show the logical drive at the maximum size
listed in the table below.
Additional capacity might appear as unpartitioned and unformatted.
Important
The Target disk array may require more physical drives than
the Source disk array
If the Target disk array requires an EVEN number of physical
drives but the Source disk array has an ODD number, ADD a
physical drive as part of the migration process
You cannot reduce the number of physical drives in your disk
array, even if the Target disk array requires fewer physical
drives than the Source disk array
RAID 1 (mirroring) works with two drives only. Only a single-
drive RAID 0 disk array can migrate to RAID 1. Other RAID
Levels use too many drives to migrate
You cannot migrate a disk array when it is Critical or
performing activities such as Synchronizing, Rebuilding, and
PDM
For RAID 6 or RAID 60, you can only migrate between these
two RAID levels. Destination RAID 60 axles can have up to
16 physical drives. Other limitations might apply